John Ronald Reuel Tolkien grave. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

After a short time, Mabel converted to Catholicism and transferred her children to it, which had a bad effect on her relations with relatives who professed Anglicanism. Despite the difficult financial situation, Mabel was determined to give her children a good liberal arts education. She herself taught Ronald Latin, French, German and Greek, as well as drawing and botany. Languages, as well as painting, were given to Ronald unusually easily, and when the boy was seven years old, she sent him to school. There he began to show simply fantastic successes. During the years spent at school, Ronald learned Anglo-Saxon, then medieval English, Gothic, Spanish, Old Norse, Finnish. He originally read "Beowulf", medieval English poems, the Finnish epic "Kalevala", led school discussions in Gothic. Dead languages ​​were the main interest of the young Tolkien. Together with them, he studied ancient mythology, epics and legends that captured his imagination. He did not just learn languages ​​- he thought them up, inventing expressions that people who spoke them could use in colloquial speech. At the same time, Ronald, using the grammar of ancient languages, began to invent his own languages ​​and write poetry in them.

In 1904, a tragedy occurred - Mabel died of diabetes. Mabel's confessor, Father Francis Morgan, took care of Ronald and his brother. Tolkien decided to devote himself to a church career, but soon changed his mind and fell in love instead, also with an orphan. The girl's name was Edith Brett, and she was three years older than Ronald, who had just turned sixteen. The age difference did not prevent him from establishing a close (in terms of the Victorian era) relationship with the girl. Upon learning of Ronald's hobby, Father Morgan forbids Ronald from seeing her until the age of majority, that is, until the age of 21. Ronald stops dating Edith, but sublimation is only good for him - he and three of his friends create the "Tea Club", the first club in his life. In the future, he constantly organized groups of like-minded people around him, with whom he could discuss his work and creativity. In 1911, Ronald entered Oxford, where at first he studied carelessly, since the knowledge accumulated by that time was more than enough. Soon, however, he became seriously interested in learning new languages ​​for him - they were the languages ​​of the Germanic group, Old Norse and Welsh, he also studied the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt. In 1913, Tolkien becomes an adult - he turns 21 years old. In the three years that he did not see Edith, his feelings did not cool down, but even got stronger. On the night of his coming of age, he writes to his beloved. Soon their engagement took place (Edith, as it turned out, was engaged to another by this time, but she canceled the first engagement for the sake of Ronald). The year 1914 is coming, and with it the war in Europe. Tolkien enters the courses of communications officers, while continuing to study. At the same time he wrote the poem "Journey of Eärendil - the Evening Star". The poem about the voyage of a sailor-star through the heavens was the first stone that formed the basis of Tolkien's new magical world.

In 1916, having passed all the exams, he finally marries his first and only chosen one and goes to the front, to France. In bloody battles, his friends die, including two of the four founders of the Tea Club. In the trenches, he catches "trench fever" (as typhus was then called). Rushing about in the heat, Ronald speaks in an incomprehensible language to those around him. The disease cannot be overcome in any way, relapses constantly occur. Tolkien was never able to return to the front, but he got enough time to work on the language, which became his obsession. It was elvish. Speakers of the Elvish language were bound to follow... Tolkien writes The Book of Lost Tales, a book that he will write and rewrite all his life, and which will be published by his son years after the death of the writer under the name "The Silmarillion".

After the end of the war, Tolkien and his family moved to Oxford and found work as a compiler for the new Oxford English Dictionary. He is working on the letter W. I must say that there are not many words for this letter in the English language (and, accordingly, in the Oxford dictionary on my shelf). Nevertheless, there are words for this letter such as "world" and "word", as well as the famous "four Ws" that define the coordinate system of our world: "who", "what", "when" and "where". Soon he becomes a teacher at Oxford. From 1925 until his death, Tolkien lived and worked in his alma mater. In Oxford, Ronald, together with his friend Clive Lewis, organized the "Inklings" club, in which Tolkien and Lewis read their unpublished works. The members of this circle were destined to be the first to hear from the lips of the author of a chapter from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In 1937, the book "The Hobbit" was published, written by Tolkien based on a story written for his children (by this time there were already four of them - 3 sons and a daughter). The book is a success, and the author is ordered to continue. But the creation of the world is a matter that is harmed by haste. In addition, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien lectures - and there is very little time left for a book. He writes slowly at night. The creation of the epic "Lord of the Rings" took Tolkien 17 years. The first two volumes of the trilogy were published in 1954, the last volume in 1955. From that moment on, the world of Middle-earth acquired an independent force and began to live according to its own laws. Tolkien died in Oxford in 1973, two years after the death of his wife. At the end of his life, he managed to catch fame and respect, but the real boom around his work began a few years after the death of the writer

60 years ago, on July 29, 1954, the first part of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings, one of the most significant books of the last century, was published in the UK. We offer the readers of "Thomas" material about the author of this book.

The author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit considered himself neither a children's writer nor an apologist for Christianity. A man who studied ancient languages ​​in his youth and invented new ones, who was brought up by the confessor of his early dead mother, became a professor at the age of 30 and went to war a few months after his marriage, turns out to be much more interesting and deeper than is commonly thought. We bring to your attention a few facts from the biography of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

John and Ruel -

family names, friends called the professor Ronald and close friends (for example, Clive Lewis) - Tollers: the British generally adopted friendly names. "Recklessly brave" - ​​so the surname "Tolkien" is translated from German. The fact is that Tolkien (Tolkien) - English version, but originally the surname was German - Tollkin (Tollkiehn) . The writer's grandfather came from Saxon Germans, he was a piano master by profession. The Tollkin family moved to England in the 18th century.

Tolkien was orphaned early: he did not remember his father, and his mother, mabel, died when Ronald was 12 years old. According to his will, his mother's confessor, Father Francis Morgan, became his guardian (she converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, because of which the Protestant relatives broke off relations with her). Tolkien later wrote: “I saw with my own eyes (still not fully understanding) the heroic suffering of my mother and her early death in extreme poverty - it was my mother who brought me to the Church”.

Zealous Catholic,

Tolkien convinced his future wife, Edith Brett, to convert from Protestantism to Catholicism. Edith and Ronald lived together all their lives and loved each other very much. Tolkien reflected his attitude towards his wife in the legend of Beren and Lúthien in The Silmarillion. Ronald and Edith were born three sons, John, Christopher and Michael, and daughter Priscilla. John became a Catholic priest. Michael and Christopher served in World War II, one as an anti-aircraft gunner, the other as a military pilot. Tolkien sent the first chapters of The Lord of the Rings to his sons at the front in letters. The professor survived his wife by only two years. On the tombstone above their graves, he asked to write: "Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien (1889-1971) and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren (1892-1973)".

Ronald Tolkien participated in World War I,

in the famous battle of the Somme, as a radio operator. He went to the front in the summer of 1916 as a volunteer, along with friends from the school circle "CHKBO" ("Tea Club and Barrovian Society"). In the autumn of 1916, he fell ill with "trench fever" and was sent back to England.

Tolkien hated war. Two of his friends from the Tea Club did not return from the battlefields. The experience is reflected in his novels: "My Sam Scrombie, - Tolkien wrote, - completely copied from those privates of the war of the 14th year, my comrades, to whom I was far away in human terms.

Tolkien became a professor at 30

Anglo-Saxon language, then - English language and literature of Oxford University. The whole world knows him as the author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, but meanwhile his main activity was linguistics. Among his scientific works are the Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language, scientific works on the medieval epic "Beowulf", the preparation of the publication of three Middle English monuments: "Gawain and the Green Knight" (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, together with Eric Gordon), "A Guide for Hermits" (Ancrene Wisse) and "Sir Orfeo" (Sir Orfeo). Tolkien even "finished" the lost verses of the famous Elder Edda, a collection of Old Norse myths of the 13th century.

John Ronald Reuel and Edith Tolkien. 1966

Tolkien invented several languages -

For example, Quenya(the language of the "high elves"), Sindarin(the language of the "gray elves"), Khuzdul(secret language of the gnomes). Even as a child, independently studying Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, he began to compose his own languages ​​and write poetry in them. Subsequently, Ronald said this about this hobby, from which the world of The Lord of the Rings grew: "My long book is an attempt to create a world in which a language that matches my personalaesthetics, could be natural.

Tolkien attached great importance to his faith.

« If you do not believe in your God, the question "What is the purpose of life?" it is useless to ask: there is no answer to it, he wrote . And although the word "God" is fundamentally absent in his novels, some critics called The Lord of the Rings "conservative and terribly Christian."

Tolkien translated the book of Jonah for the publication of the so-called. Jerusalem Bible.

It was not without his influence that Clive Lewis became a Christian, who later became a well-known apologist, the author of the books The Chronicles of Narnia, The Letters of Balamut, Mere Christianity, and others. But, much to the chagrin of Ronald, his friend preferred Anglicanism to Catholicism.

Exactly at 11:30 on Tuesdays,

for two decades, Tolkien came to the pub "The Eagle and Child" for weekly club meetings "Inklings". And on Thursdays they gathered at the house of Clive Lewis, around whom this company was formed. "Inklings"- Oxford circle, united by a love of literature and philology. It included Warren Lewis, a military man and archivist for his brother, writer Clive Lewis; Hugo Dyson, Oxford professor; Charles Williams, eccentric, philologist and theologian; Owen Barfield, whose daughter, Lucy, is dedicated to Lewis's novel "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and others. It was at the meetings of the Inklings that The Lord of the Rings was first read.

"Lord of the Rings" -

one of the most popular books of the 20th century. It was an extraordinary success immediately after publication, and in the 1960s a real "Tolkien boom" began. In England and the United States, the novel was reprinted almost every year. He gave impetus to the development of the fantasy genre and the role-playing movement.

To date, The Lord of the Rings has been translated into 38 languages.

The film rights to the novel were sold by Tolkien in 1968, but the film epic did not appear until 2001. In December 2012, the first part of the film trilogy based on another work by Tolkien, The Hobbit, was released, which describes the story preceding the events of The Lord of the Rings.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien UK, Birmingham; 01/03/1892 - 09/02/1973
Tolkien's books had a huge impact on world literature. They have been filmed many times in different countries of the world. A huge number of games, cartoons, comics and fanfiction have been created based on Tolkien's books. The writer is rightfully called the father of the modern fantasy genre and he consistently ranks high in the rankings of the most influential and popular writers of the 20th century.

Biography of Tolkien John Ronald Reuel

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in the Republic of South Africa. There, his family ended up thanks to the promotion of his father, who worked as the manager of one of the branches of an English bank. In 1894, the second child was born in the family - Hilary's brother Arthur Ruel. In the Republic of South Africa, John Tolkien lived until 1896, when, due to the death of his father, the boys' mother was forced to return to England. The family's income was low, and the mother, in search of consolation, became a deeply religious person. It was she who instilled in children a love for Catholicism, taught the basics of the Latin language, botany, and taught Tolkien to read and write at the age of 4. But when John was only twelve years old, their mother died of diabetes. Since then, the priest of the Birmingham church, Francis Morgan, took up the upbringing of the brothers.
In 1900, John Tolkien entered the school of King Edward, where almost immediately his not hefty abilities for languages ​​were revealed. Thanks to this, by the time he graduated from school, the boy already knew Old English and began to study four more languages. In 1911, John Tolkien visited Switzerland, where, together with his comrades, he overcame 12 km through the mountains. The impressions received during this journey formed the basis of his books. In October of the same year, he entered the University of Oxford, first at the Department of Classical Literature, but soon transferred to the Department of English Language and Literature.
In 1913, John Tolkien announced his engagement to Edith Mary Bret, whom he had known for more than five years, but at the insistence of Francis Morgan, he did not communicate with whom until the age of 21. Despite the fact that by this time Mary had already agreed to marry another person, the engagement took place, and three years later the wedding took place. Together they lived for 56 years, raised three sons and a daughter.
In 1914 the First World War began. In order to complete his education, Tolkien enlisted in the Military Corps. But after receiving a bachelor's degree in 1915, he was admitted to the army as a lieutenant. He served in the army until November 1916 and managed to take part in the battle of the Somme and many other battles. He was commissioned due to the disease of trench fever and for more than two years he was subject to attacks of the disease.
After the end of the war, John Tolkien worked as a professor at Leeds and then at Oxford Universities. It was at this time that he began work on his novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The book was originally written for her children, but then she received unexpected recognition with the publication in 1937. During the Second World War, John Tolkien was asked to take on the job of a codebreaker if necessary, but the need for his services was not in demand.
After the war, in 1945, Tolkien became a professor at Oxford Merton College, as well as an examiner at the University of Dublin. Here he worked until his retirement. At the same time, he begins work on his most famous book, The Lord of the Rings. Parts of it have been released since 1954. It was widely successful, and against the backdrop of the emerging hippie movement, was perceived as a revelation. Tolkien's books and the writer himself gained wide popularity because of which he even had to change his phone number. After that, several more Tolkien books were published, but many of the writer's sketches remained sketches and were published by his son after the writer's death. The writer died as a result of a stomach ulcer in 1973. Nevertheless, new Tolkien books are coming out to this day. The writer's son, Christoph Tolkien, took up the revision of his father's unfinished creations. Thanks to this, the books "The Silmarillion" and "Children of Hurin" were published. Tolkien's last book was The Fall of Gondolin, which was released in August 2018.

Tolkien's Books at Top Books

John Tolkien's books are still popular to read today, and recently released film adaptations only stir up interest in his work. This allowed them to occupy high places in ours. And given their so-called academic character in this genre, we predict that in the future Tolkien's books will be read with the same enthusiasm.

J. R. R. Tolkien book list

Middle-earth:

1. The Fellowship of the Ring
2. Two fortresses
3. Return of the King
4. Silmarillion
5. Children of Hurin
6. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Scarlet Book
7. Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien(English) John Ronald Reuel Tolkien)- English writer, linguist and philologist. He is best known as the author of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and their backstory, the novel The Silmarillion.

Born in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now the Free State, South Africa). His parents, Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857-1896), an English bank manager, and Mabel Tolkien (Sufffield) (1870-1904), arrived in South Africa shortly before their son was born.
In early 1895, after the death of their father, the Tolkien family returned to England. The family settled in Sarehole, near Birmingham. Mabel Tolkien had a very modest income, which was just enough to live on.
Mabel taught her son the basics of the Latin language, and instilled a love of botany. Tolkien liked to paint landscapes and trees from an early age. He read a lot, and from the very beginning he disliked "Treasure Island" and "Gammeln Pied Piper" by the Brothers Grimm, but he liked "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, stories about Indians, fantasy works of George MacDonald and "The Fairy Book" by Andrew Lang .
Tolkien's mother died of diabetes in 1904, at the age of 34. Before her death, she entrusted the upbringing of children to Father Francis Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham Church, a strong and extraordinary personality. It was Francis Morgan who developed Tolkien's interest in philology, for which he was later very grateful.
Before entering school, Tolkien and his brother spent a lot of time outdoors. The experience of these years was enough for Tolkien for all the descriptions of forests and fields in his works. In 1900, Tolkien entered King Edward's School, where he learned Old English and began to study others - Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish, Gothic. He showed early linguistic talent, after studying Old Welsh and Finnish, he began to develop "elvish" languages. Subsequently, he studied at the school of St. Philip (St. Philip's School) and Oxford College Exeter.
In 1908 he met Edith Marie Brett, who had a great influence on his work.
Falling in love prevented Tolkien from going to college right away, besides, Edith was a Protestant and three years older than him. Father Francis took John's word of honor that he would not meet with Edith until he was 21 years old - that is, until the age of majority, when Father Francis ceased to be his guardian. Tolkien fulfilled his promise by not writing a single line to Mary Edith before reaching that age. They didn't even meet or talk.
On the evening of the same day, when Tolkien turned 21, he wrote a letter to Edith, where he declared his love and offered his hand and heart. Edith replied that she had already agreed to marry another person, because she decided that Tolkien had long forgotten her. In the end, she returned the wedding ring to the groom and announced that she was marrying Tolkien. In addition, at his insistence, she converted to Catholicism.
The engagement took place in Birmingham in January 1913, and the wedding took place on March 22, 1916 in the English city of Warwick, in the Catholic Church of St. Mary. Their union with Edith Brett proved to be a long and happy one. The couple lived together for 56 years and raised 3 sons - John Francis Reuel (1917), Michael Hilary Reuel (1920), Christopher Reuel (1924), and daughter Priscilla Mary Reuel (1929).
In 1915, Tolkien graduated with honors from the university and went to serve, soon John was called to the front and participated in the First World War.
John survived the bloody battle on the Somme, where two of his best friends died, after which he began to hate war. Then he fell ill with typhus, and after a long treatment was sent home with a disability. He devoted the following years to a scientific career: first teaching at the University of Leeds, in 1922 he received the position of professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature at the University of Oxford, where he became one of the youngest professors (at 30 years old) and soon earned a reputation as one of the best philologists in the world.
At the same time, he began to write the great cycle of myths and legends of Middle Earth (Middle Earth), which would later become the "Silmarillion". There were four children in his family, for them he first composed, narrated, and then recorded The Hobbit, which was later published in 1937 by Sir Stanley Unwin.
The Hobbit was a success, and Unwin suggested Tolkien write a sequel, but work on the trilogy took a long time and the book was not finished until 1954, when Tolkien was about to retire. The trilogy was published and was a huge success, which surprised both the author and the publisher. Unwin expected to lose considerable money, but he personally liked the book very much, and he was very eager to publish his friend's work. The book was divided into 3 parts, so that after the publication and sale of the first part, it became clear whether it was worth printing the rest.
After the death of his wife in 1971, Tolkien returned to Oxford. Soon he became seriously ill and soon, on September 2, 1973, he died.
All of his works published after 1973, including The Silmarillion, were published by his son Christopher.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Eng. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; January 3, 1892, Bloemfontein, Orange Republic - September 2, 1973 Bournemouth, England) - English writer, poet, philologist, professor at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of the high fantasy classics The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College. Oxford University (1925-1945), Merton English Language and Literature at Merton College (English) Russian. Oxford University (1945-1959). Together with close friend C.S. Lewis, he was a member of the Inklings, an informal literary society. On March 28, 1972, he received the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) from Queen Elizabeth II.

After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher produced several works based on his father's vast corpus of notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. This book, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, constitutes a single collection of fairy tales, poems, stories, artificial languages ​​and literary essays about a fictional world called Arda and its part of Middle-earth. In 1951-1955, Tolkien used the word "Legendarium" to refer to most of this collection. Many authors wrote fantasy before Tolkien, however, due to his great popularity and strong influence on the genre, many call Tolkien the "father" of modern fantasy literature, meaning mainly "high fantasy".

In 2008, the British newspaper The Times ranked him sixth on their list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945". In 2009, the American magazine Forbes named him the fifth highest-earning celebrity who died.